


You Build A Fine Shrine In Me

by LayALioness



Series: Nothing Like Old Times [2]
Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Terminator Fusion, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bellamy is john connor, Clarke is basically cameron, this got a little angsty and pretty weird oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 10:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4218774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Trust me,” Blake says. “Nothing is funnier than you bragging about killing me.”</p><p>“I do not brag,” Clarke explains. “I state truths. I will kill you, and stick your head on a pike for all to see.”</p><p>“Of course,” Blake agrees with a hand gesture. “But first—what do you know about Ancient Rome?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Build A Fine Shrine In Me

**Author's Note:**

> this is the sequel to This is How You Hold.
> 
> Also I've made a playlist for this series because 8tracks rules me when ao3 is on break:  
> http://8tracks.com/tierannasaurusrex/you-explained-the-infinite/

When Clarke meets Bellamy Blake, she is a very young Machine, and he is a pretty old human.

She infiltrates the Resistance easier than she thought she would, taking on the form of one of Blake’s trusted Lieutenants.

She’d met Harper, briefly, before snapping her neck. She took the girl’s memories, to help keep her cover, and she can still feel them snaking around in her skull. She thinks memories work the way of string—messy and knotted and mixed up. No wonder humans make everything so complicated. They’d be much better off without them.

She misses dogs—Harper misses dogs, but Clarke is now Harper, and so she misses them too. It’s less than ideal.

Clarke, as Harper, slinks into Blake's bedroom in the middle of the night. Some of the guards see her and nod a little, and Clarke can remember sneaking to this room before, more than once. She can remember what happened when she did, and she shivers. It is a new sensation, and not entirely unpleasant, but still strange.

She worries about things like this, and that in itself is troublesome. Machines do not feel worry. Harper was a worrier, though, and Clarke finds herself glancing over her shoulder every few seconds.

She wonders how long it might take before Harper eventually wears off. If she ever will. She wonders how long it might take for Clarke to wear off, so Harper can become human again.

Clarke, as Harper, creeps in through Bellamy’s door—it’s locked, but poorly, easily picked. It clicks and she slips in, and finds him waiting in his pajamas, looking not at all like the leader of an entire species. He looks warm, she thinks. And tired. And entirely unsurprised to see her.

There’s a chessboard, set up and ready for play, between them. He gestures to it with a tired smile. “I know you’re here to kill me,” he says. “But I thought maybe we could have an intermission, just one game. And if I win, you let me live.”

Clarke pauses. She analyzes—she is always analyzing. She knows the air in this room is 73 degrees Fahrenheit, 22 degrees Celsius. She knows the floor beneath her foot is a mixture of pine and cherry wood laminate, she knows they are in the southeast corner of the building, and that the building itself is shifting to the left at a rate of .03 millimeters per year. She knows there is a rat in the basement, and a total of seventeen guards, each armed with a weapon. One hundred and thirty-nine bullets.

She knows the man before her is Bellamy Blake, leader of the Human Resistance, thirty-seven years old, excellent marksman—though not as good as her—specializes in hand-made bombs. Capable of rewiring Machines, though she smugly determines he’s never encountered her model. At least, not in this timeline.

She knows he killed his first Machine when he was twelve. She knows he killed his first man when he was sixteen. She knows he’s crossed through time more than any other being.

She does not know why he’s sitting in his pajamas, cross-legged on his mattress, asking his assassin to a game of chess.

She does not know why she agrees to it.

She blames Harper, but. Harper never learned to play chess, she knows. This is Clarke, sitting carefully down across from a human.

 _He’s good_ , she thinks, and then immediately after, _he’s better than me._

Clarke loses. She’s not sure how to process this situation, because she has never lost before. It’s more uncomfortable than the shivering.

“Don’t worry,” he grins, smug, but waves his win away. “You taught me everything I know.”

Clarke tips her head; she’d assumed he’d known she was a Machine. “I am not Harper,” she says, and it goes against all of her training as an infiltrator, but.

She finds herself intrigued by him. She doesn’t want to analyze that.

“I know,” Blake nods. “You’re Clarke.” He pauses, shy. “I’ve been waiting for this moment. For a while, now.”

Clarke has a working knowledge of time travel; all Machines do. But time does not lend itself easily to being understood. She thinks it might work something like memories, like bits of string crisscrossing all around each other, knotting and unknotting and breaking apart.

“You’ve met me,” she decides, because it’s really the only possible explanation. The leader of the Human Resistance should not be so cavalier about playing chess with the Machine sent to kill him.

Blake grins. “A long time ago. I was a lot stupider then.”

Clarke tips her head in thought. “And you are not, now?” She does not mean to offend, though she knows humans offend easily. She’s curious—which is also new, but. Everything seems new to her, these days.

“Less stupid now,” Blake amends.

Clarke thinks about the nights Harper has spent in this bed. They sometimes spoke, but not always, not usually, and never about anything large. Sometimes about the war, about the Resistance, about the Machines. Harper told him about the Machine that killed her parents in front of her, and he’d hummed and kissed in between her legs, but he hadn’t said anything back. They never played chess. Harper never stayed until morning.

“Why are you telling me this?” Clarke asks. Blake is looking at her, and she has an encyclopedia in her chip on the range of human facial expressions, so she knows the lilt to his mouth is _fondness_ , the glint in his eyes _sadness_ , and a little _hope_. She does not understand, but she desperately wants to. There is nothing she hates more than feeling confused.

“Because I miss you,” Blake shrugs. “I’ve missed you.” He smirks. “And I really don’t want you to kill me again.”

Clarke’s brows raise. She has a working knowledge of time travel, but. “I’ve killed you before?” she asks, a little proud of herself. Somewhere, a different her didn’t fall for the chessboard.

“A few times,” Blake admits. “I got carried away, thinking you were my Clarke, but you weren’t yet.”

Clarke takes a moment to mull over his words. _His_ Clarke. She is not anyone’s but her own, this she knows, and she likes that. She works for Skynet, but they do not own her. She doesn’t like the idea of being had, of belonging to someone else.

“I am not yours,” she argues. Blake smiles fondly.

“You will be,” he promises. “And I’ll be yours. Don’t worry—you won’t belong to anyone. You’ll still be you.”

“But a different me,” Clarke clarifies. She knows what it is he does, rewiring her kind’s minds until they obey him. She does not see the appeal.

“A different you,” Blake concedes. “But still you. You won’t do anything you don’t want to.”

“What if I don’t want to be changed?” She waits, ready to analyze his answer and see if he’s lying. She can still very easily kill him, and that thought comforts her.

Blake shrugs. “Then I won’t change you. We’re already making some progress right now.” He believes his words, so she does not kill him immediately.

“How so?”

“Well,” he pauses. “Do you still want to kill me?”

“Very much,” Clarke says instantly, because it’s true. She doesn’t have a time limit, though, and he doesn’t seem likely to alert the guards any time soon. “I promised someone I’d stick your head on a pike for all to see.”

Blake laughs at that, which she doesn’t think is an appropriate response, but. Everything else about him has confounded her, so why shouldn’t this? She frowns. “You think your death is humorous,” she decides. “Strange.”

“Trust me,” Blake gasps out. “Nothing is funnier than you _bragging_ about killing me.”

“I do not brag,” Clarke explains. “I state truths. I _will_ kill you, and stick your head on a pike for all to see.”

“Of course,” Blake agrees with a hand gesture. “But first—what do you know about Ancient Rome?”

She spends the next two hours receiving a history lesson, and losing once more at chess, before sneaking out through his window. He distracts the guards so she can slip away.

Clarke goes back to him three nights in a row. They don’t always play chess—sometimes she just lays on his mattress, her head at his feet, and listen while he tells her stories. The history of stars, of ancient kings and queens, of past wars fought in forgotten lands. She likes the sound of his voice—she does not analyze that, either.

He always offers to let her stay, and join the Resistance. And she always leaves at first light.

On the fourth day, Wells corners her at the factory.

“Why is it taking so long?” he hisses, accusatory. He’s analyzed her by now, he’ll know she isn’t telling the truth. She lies, anyway.

“His room is more well-guarded than we thought,” she shrugs—it’s a human gesture, and Wells notices. “It will take time, to get him alone.”

“Isn’t that why you took this form?” Wells argues, more bewildered than angry. He doesn’t understand why she would lie; Machines do not lie to one another, and she and Wells were built in the same factory.

“He has not wanted to see her,” Clarke argues. “Their relationship seems to be one-sided.” It’s not true, at least technically. Bellamy had never turned Harper away, but in all the memories of him, Clarke can tell he’d kept himself closed to her. The thought of that pleases her, that she should know him better than the girl that warmed his bed. She does not analyze this; by now, she knows.

She thinks she might have known since that first night, but she’s not sure completely. It’s all very confusing; human emotions are a hard thing to grasp.

“You should tread carefully,” Wells warns. They are Machines, so emotional attachments do not come naturally, but there is some fondness there. “Skynet will not be kind when they find out.”

 _When_ , not _if_ , because it is not a question. Skynet will always find out.

Clarke nods, and goes to Bellamy. He’s left his window open for her, because she likes the climb. Harper had been afraid of heights, and that comforts Clarke, because at least she knows her affection for climbing is her own.

Blake glances up from his book as she climbs in. He’s wearing glasses, and his hair is wet from the shower. He smells like soap and dirt and smoke. He smiles, and she thinks she probably loves him.

Love is also new, and this may be partly Harper, but. Clarke’s sure it’s partly her, too.

“I will join you,” she decides, and he hums pleasantly.

“Good,” he nods. “I was hoping it’d be soon—you took much longer, last time.”

She wonders about the other Clarkes he’s known, and if he liked them as much as he likes her. If he taught them of stars, and ancient empires, and played chess with them on his bed. She does not ask. She’s not sure she wants the answers.

He rewires her mind, because she lets him. “It won’t hurt,” he swears, staring down at her, and she’s never seen him so intense. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Clarke nods and then feels the tip of a screwdriver scrape the skin of her skull. And then she fades out.

When she wakes up, she’s tucked in Bellamy's bed, and alone. He’s left her tea on the bedside table, and she knows there is a gun tucked under the mattress. She is not wearing Harper’s old clothes, and her feet are bare. She stares at them, wiggling the toes. She’s not sure she’s ever actually seen them.

Clarke probes her thoughts, searching for what is different. Harper’s memories are still there, though less overwhelming, and Clarke’s own are there too. She’s glad for that; there are some things from her old life she hadn’t wanted to lose. Wells, and Glass, and Abby. And finding Bellamy, with that chessboard on his bed.

She startles at that; she’s never thought of him as _Bellamy_ , before. _Blake_ , yes. Leader of the Human Resistance. Her new general, her past target. She wonders if he did this, put the thought gingerly into her brain. _Bellamy. Friend._ The words taste nice on her tongue.

Mostly, she finds that where there used to be a burning need to obliterate the humans, it has faded down to a pleasant hum. She finds she likes that, much better.

She meets Octavia that day, when the girl wraps her in a hug. If Clarke’s bones weren’t made of metal, they might have been crushed. She’s not sure what to do with her arms, so she just stands and lets the girl clutch her. When she pulls back, her eyes are wet, and Clarke’s not sure what to do with that, either.

“Took you long enough,” Octavia snarls. “You’re such a brat.”

Clarke awkwardly pats her shoulder, something she’s seen humans do as some fort of attempt to comfort. Octavia snorts and just shrugs her hand away. “C’mon,” she commands, gripping Clarke’s wrist and dragging her downstairs. “Time to learn how to be human.”

“I know how,” Clarke argues, because she does. She’s an infiltrator, she’s been trained in humanity since her first boot-up. She knows the mannerisms, the slang, the facial expressions. She can laugh, and cry on demand. She even knows the Foxtrot.

Octavia rolls her eyes wildly. Clarke mimics the action, as some sort of proof. They pass a dog in the hallway, and one of the soldiers has to pull it back harshly when it lunges at Clarke. She looks down at it sadly—she does still miss dogs.

“Time to learn how to be one of us,” Octavia declares. They spend the rest of the morning doing Yoga, and watching Spanish soap operas. Spanish is one of the languages Clarke has been coded with, so she translates for Octavia. The story seems a bit contrived, but the leading actress is very beautiful, and Clarke finds herself hoping she finds her father’s killer before the end.

“Not that what you’re doing isn’t very important,” Bellamy says dryly from the doorway. “But I kind of need help, saving the world.”

Octavia snorts derisively, but Clarke stands and follows him down to the basement, refurbished into some sort of war council room. There are others from his militia, and they’re trying not to stare at her. They’ve seen rewired Machines before; Bellamy has quite the collection. But he’s never let any of them into this room. Or his bed.

His men are confused, and unnerved by her. She takes a moment to revel in it. It’s been a while since she’s been feared.

“Are you sure this is for the best,” an older man says calmly from his seat at the table. Clarke does not know him, but his eyes shine with recognition.

“Marcus,” Bellamy says mildly. “Let’s just assume that I’ve been to the future, and I know what I’m doing.”

Marcus rolls his eyes and leans back. “You’re hardly the only one here that’s ever time traveled, kid,” he argues, but then goes quiet. Clarke stays by Bellamy’s side and observes.

Over time, she learns what Octavia meant. She masters Yoga, and teaches some of the soldiers rudimentary Spanish so they can follow the soaps. The dogs learn to merely growl whenever she walks by—she still misses them, and is a little bitter about it. She still spends every night in Bellamy’s bed until he falls asleep, and then she goes down to the kitchen and tries out the recipes Monty, one of the newest recruits, has taught her. Sometimes she washes the laundry, but she doesn’t really get the hang of detergent ratios. She stands beside Bellamy at all of his meetings, and then later on the front lines.

She always goes in first; this is an understanding they have. He never tries to say no; only one of them can take a bullet to the stomach and walk away.

She sometimes sits in the sun room with Marcus, and watches him carve wooden sticks into intricate canes. “It relaxes me,” he’d explained, and she watches. He offers to let her try, but she thinks this might be something he should keep for himself. He tells her stories too, but different from Bellamy’s. Westerns, mostly. Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood.

They never tell her about her time with them, before. Years ago, for them. Their pasts will be her future. She has a working knowledge of time travel, but she’s starting to think the scholars got it wrong.

Some weeks into her time at the safe house, Bellamy finds her in the kitchen, drizzling glaze onto a tray of Chai muffins. He wiggles an old bottle of cheap whiskey and nods towards the stairs. She follows him all the way up to the attic, and then through the window and onto the roof. The night is still thick around them, and Clarke lays down to feel the press of tile against her bared shoulders. Bellamy takes a swig from the bottle and then hands it to her.

“We used to do this,” he smiles softly, waving a hand at the roof. “Climb up on a roof with some whiskey, and just talk.”

Clarke eyes the bottle before taking a sip. It burns her lips and mouth and throat and nose. “Why do you drink this?” she asks, passing it back to him with a frown. He laughs and takes it.

“I’m a very sentimental person,” he admits. “And it tastes nice. Makes everything feel lighter.”

“I do not feel lighter,” Clarke argues. She feels very solid, very heavy on this roof. She wonders if she might fall through—metal can be very dense.

“You feel more than you think you do,” Bellamy says, staring openly at her.

“Machines do not feel,” she says blatantly. It is something they all learned in the factory, even before they learned of the war. “Not like humans.”

“No,” Bellamy agrees. “But you do feel. You wouldn’t be worth much if you couldn’t.”

Clarke takes a long moment to process the words. Longer than is necessary, because she’s a rather quick learner, and so she knows what he’s trying to say.

 _I love him_ , she thinks. _And he loves me._

She takes the bottle and drinks until her mouth goes numb. He laughs too loud for how late it is, how quiet it is. And then all at once he sobers and turns his face towards the moon. It makes the freckles on his face shine, and she has the sudden urge to touch them.

“I’m sending Luke to the past, tomorrow,” he says. “To protect my mom. A T-800 was sent to kill her, before she could have me. Luke saved her.”

Clarke waits, because she knows this story—every Machine does. It’s a warning, to not underestimate their enemies. That same T-800 is the first Bellamy ever rewires, and a huge blow to Skynet. She waits, because she knows he’s trying to tell her something important.

“Luke is my dad,” he admits quietly, and Clarke is surprised. She knows Luke; one of Bellamy’s first Lieutenants, and his good friend. He always stops by to try her latest dessert.

And, now that she thinks of it, he has Bellamy’s lopsided smile.

“How long have you known?” she wonders. It must have been strange, befriending and training his own father, leading him in battle.

“A while,” he admits. “My mom told me little things about him, like how he was allergic to cats, and always had to slice an apple before eating it. Eventually, it just clicked in place. She never told me his name, but. I could put the pieces together.”

“He does not know,” Clarke decides, because she’d seen Luke that morning, eating scrambled eggs in the kitchen with Miller and Monty, laughing at some joke.

Bellamy nods. “He’s not supposed to. He falls for my mom pretty accidentally,” he says wryly, and then sobers. “He doesn’t make it back.”

Clarke puts a palm on his shoulder—she’s still not sure how to comfort—but he leans into her touch. “You’re a good leader,” she assures him. “And a good friend.”

Bellamy lets out a breath, but doesn’t answer. They stay until sunrise, and when they climb down, Miller is waiting with a smug grin. Bellamy just huffs and rolls his eyes, tugging Clarke’s hair before leaving.

Luke is sent away and for some weeks, everyone is on edge, waiting for something to happen. Some sort of butterfly effect, showing that he hadn’t succeeded. They watch Bellamy closely, scared to blink in case he fades away.

He doesn’t, and Luke doesn’t come back. Bellamy admits some of his memories have changed, but nothing unusual. Octavia is now thirty-four instead of thirty-three. She’s also married to a Resistance fighter named Lincoln, though that’s not a complete shock. Apparently they’d been shy around each other since before Clarke arrived—Luke just sped it up some.

Clarke has a few new memories of her own. She’d held Octavia’s flowers at the wedding. She’d danced with her, and Miller, and Monty, and Marcus, and Lincoln. She’d danced with Bellamy, and he’d pressed his mouth to her forehead before falling asleep.

She’d led the militia to a factory she remembered from her old days. She’d watched one of the younger recruits, Charlotte, rip Wells’s chip from his skull.

She’d gone to Bellamy’s room that night and laid against his stomach while he’d curled a hand around her skull. His palm had laid protectively over her chip as he’d murmured against her temple. _I won’t let anything happen to you_.

She’d told him she loved him, and he’d smiled, and curled around her before falling asleep.

“Me too,” he’d added drowsily. “But you knew that already.”

She’d nodded, because she did. She’d known it since that night with the chessboard. When he’d called her _his_.

She thinks she might be, and she doesn’t mind so much anymore. She hasn’t felt the need to analyze anything for a while.

She still doesn’t eat, or sleep, and most of the crew’s jokes don’t make much sense to her, but. When she sees Octavia fold herself against Lincoln, his hand brushing the slight swell of her belly, Clarke thinks she understands. She looks over at Bellamy, tipping his head back to laugh at something Miller’s said, and she knows what it is to belong. It is not what she thought.

She meets Wick two months into her stay. He is sitting at the dining table, fiddling with the skull of a Terminator.

“Be careful,” she chides, annoyed at this human’s audacity. “Even one part of the endoskeleton could become sentient.”

The man laughs harder than she thinks the moment requires, and she stiffens. She still does not like to be laughed at. He turns to take her in slowly, fond smile on his face. “Well, it’s about damn time,” he smirks.

Clarke frowns. “What are you talking about?” she demands, glancing around. She feels better when surrounded by the soldiers she recognizes. She takes in his metal chair, and the uselessness of his legs, the malady in his bones. “You are broken,” she realizes.

“You said the same thing when we first met,” he shakes his head. “Twenty-one years, and you haven’t learned a thing.”

“Who are you?” Clarke asks. It is clear he knows her, and she does not like being at a disadvantage.

“Kyle,” he chirps pleasantly. “But you’ll know me as Wick.”

Clarke eyes him a little skeptically. “Were we,” she pauses, still unused to using the word. “Friends?”

Wick grins. “Definitely,” he says. “Even if you put bullets in all my giant books.”

“How many books did you have?” she wonders. Books are rare these days—even Bellamy only has a handful. Wick shrugs.

“A lot,” he says. “I was a librarian.” He waves the hollowed-out metal skull. “And now I build bombs for the war. I definitely didn’t need a degree for this.”

Wick introduces her to a side of the militia Clarke has never seen—the mechanics, and engineers. They live in an old car garage some blocks from the house. Raven rules over the crew with an iron grip, occasionally tossing a wrench or two to get her point across. Usually she aims for Wick, but sometimes she likes to switch things up, to keep them guessing.

She likes Clarke pretty instantly, because Clarke lets her cut her skin open and take a peek at her metalwork. Sometimes she even tightens a few bolts here and there, scoffing “A German Shepherd could have done a better job. An _engineer’s_ more competent with wire-cutters!”

Wick grins at that, calling out, “I love you too, Reyes!” Raven rolls her eyes and huffs, but Clarke can see the blush on her cheeks. She detects her elevated heart rate, her pheromone release. She says nothing—humans apparently like to keep these things to themselves, for the most part. She still has no idea why.

She still tells Bellamy she loves him, usually at night when they’re curled up in his bed or on the rooftop. It’s getting cold, and he’s constantly layering her with sweaters, though she’s reminded him the cold does not bother her. He only huffs and winds a scarf around her neck.

He always says “I know,” and smiles, and usually tucks her head under his chin softly. He hasn’t kissed her again.

She takes note of Octavia and Lincoln—with the tiny life slowly growing in her stomach—and Raven and Wick, and Miller and Monty who she saw pressed together on the porch one night, and she thinks of Bellamy alone in his bed with his chessboard and books, and she feels sad for him.

Machines cannot feel sad, she knows this, but she does, and she cannot explain it any more than she can explain her need to see Bellamy happy, or the satisfaction it gives her to feel his arm on her stomach each night. These things are impossible, but they are true, and they are hers, and she will not lose them.

“Why do you not mate?” she asks him one night. He glances up from his reading, glasses crooked on his nose, skin tinged yellow by the lamplight, and he laughs, and she loves him.

“Mate?” he asks.

“Miller, Monty,” she counts on her fingers. “Lincoln, Octavia. Raven, Wick. There are others. It seems humans prefer to pair off—but not you.”

“Kane doesn’t have a mate,” Bellamy points out, and he’s still smiling warmly at her. Clarke reaches up to trace a finger along the curve of his lips. “And I have you.”

“Yes,” Clarke agrees. “But I am a Machine. I am not enough.”

Bellamy bats her hand away and reaches out to drag her closer, so her face is pressed against his sternum and their legs tangle together. Secretly, she likes it best when he holds her this way. She thinks he probably knows—it’s probably some leftover remnants of Harper, but. It feels nice. She won’t give this up, either.

She has embraced her selfish side, it seems.

“You’re enough,” Bellamy murmurs, pressing his mouth to her scalp. “You’ve always been enough.”

She listens to his heartbeat slow as he falls asleep, and she knows he believes it.

She’s been with the Resistance for three months when Bellamy pulls her aside. She can hear the strain of his heart, the fear and anger bubbling beneath his surface, and she goes rigid.

“There is a threat?” she guesses, searching the surrounding area. She needs to get him to safety.

Bellamy puts both hands on her shoulders with a sigh. “No,” he winces. “Not yet, anyway. In the past—they sent a Terminator to my school. I need you to go back, to protect me and my mom and Octavia.” He stares at her, firm and tense and burning. “Do whatever it takes,” he orders—because this is an _order_ , he’s _ordering_ her, and the thought makes her heavy. “To get close to me. Convince me we’re friends, so I trust you. Whatever it takes to save my family.”

He pauses, looking pained, and Clarke hopes it’s true because with each word she’s felt colder and colder. “Eventually a Machine named Dante will ask you for something,” he hesitates and licks his lips, nervous. Angry. Mostly at himself, she can tell, but also just in general. Angry he’s being put in this position, ordering her, sending her away. She knows he doesn’t _want_ to, which makes this so much worse. She doesn’t want to go. “Give it to him, no matter what it is.” He moves his palms to her cheeks, digging his fingers roughly through her hair. “Trust me?”

“Yes,” she says instantly.

Wick and Raven give her a last checkup, and then Raven slaps her shoulder, while Wick makes her stoop awkwardly so he can swing his arms around her in a hug. “Be safe,” he says gruffly, and it’s the most serious she’s ever heard him, so she promises she will. It’s a lie, but she’s learned that sometimes lies are necessary—not for the mission, but for people. For their hearts.

Human hearts are soft and fragile things, not made of metal. They must be coddled, and cared for, and studied and fixed.

Clarke doesn’t falter until the lightning begins to surround her, and she can see Bellamy watching from outside the sphere. “Wait,” she calls out. “Bellamy, no, I don’t want to—” she gasps, finding it difficult to breathe. Perhaps her lungs model is faulty. “I don’t want to go, please don’t make me go,” she says. “I love you, and you love me!” Bellamy watches as the world bursts around her.

She wakes up naked, but it is an easy thing to form clothing.

It is an easy thing to find Bellamy—he is different from her Bellamy—younger, and angrier, but. She can see the bones of the man she loves in this boy, and who he will become, and so she follows him. He doesn’t recognize her, which only hurts at first. Marcus is so bitter towards her, she’s thrown for a moment. Octavia is small and loud and _happy_. Aurora is the only true mystery for Clarke—the only one to which she doesn’t have a strange set of blueprints. She’ll have to figure her out in this time.

But these are still the people she knew. The people she will know. This Bellamy is still Bellamy, will become hers.

It is an easy thing to make him fall in love with her. It is an easy thing to love him back.

She recognizes Roma from her days as a recruit, and she knows Roma recognizes her—she can smell the fear, see it in the girl’s eyes, but Clarke says nothing. Bellamy is happy with her, and so she lets her live.

She does follow her out to the barn, though. Roma thinks she intends to kill her, and she still might, but.

She’d seen them earlier, Roma and this young Bellamy, and she knows what they were doing, has done it once herself. But she doesn’t quite remember it, and she could feel the dopamine, the oxytocin.

Clarke has a thorough understanding of her own engineering, her endoskeleton, her hardware and software. She knows her chip and the human brain have no similarities. She does not release the same chemicals.

But, kissing looks nice, and so she asks Roma to try with her. Roma holds her face while they kiss, and Clarke likes the warmth of her hands, the pads of her fingers. She likes the warmth of her mouth better. Kissing is nice, and she likes it. She threatens to break Roma’s neck if she comes near Bellamy again.

In the end she doesn’t need to, Cece does it for her, and then dumps the girl’s body in the riverbed.

Bellamy asks Clarke why she didn’t kill Roma herself, and she means to say “I would have, if she’d touched you again,” but instead she says “Because you would have been upset with me,” which is just as true.

This Bellamy is not her Bellamy, but he is her something, and she belongs to both Bellamy’s. He still falls asleep with her in his bed, and wraps an arm around her stomach. He still knows the stories of the stars, and ancient kings and princesses.

He still loves her, she is sure.

She wonders if, twenty years from now, her Bellamy is remembering these moments. If this is why she found him waiting, smiling, calling her name.

She finds that she likes birds. There are no birds in the future, or at least the one she's come from. She likes watching them soar, and she likes catching them in her hands and feeling their tiny hearts beating fast against their fingers. Sometimes she kills them, they are so small, so easily broken. But she learns how to hold fairly easily--not too tight.

Clarke finds Wick easily too, hiding among his books in the library. She can smell the sickness in his legs, so much worse than it is in the future, and she says, “You are broken.”

He snorts, like he can’t really believe what she’s said. “Never be a counselor,” he says. “I’m not broken.”

“You are,” Clarke says sadly, and she thinks about the moments where she was not herself. Where she nearly killed the only thing she has to lose. She shudders. “I know; I am also broken.”

Wick studies her for a moment. “We’re not broken,” he decides. “Just because a part of us doesn’t work, that doesn’t make us _less_ than anything. Just means we have to work a little harder at the small stuff.”

Clarke shelves books with him, and then teaches him to shoot a gun.

“You’re officially my new best friend,” he decides, still giddy with adrenaline, and shaking his arms from the kickback.

She takes a pamphlet about mourning from him, and hands it to Bellamy. This is how humans cope, she knows. Reading pages, lighting candles, speaking to granite, writing notes. It is strange, but no stranger than her. No stranger than time.

Clarke has a working knowledge of time travel. She knows that somewhere, a different Bellamy is being killed by a different her. She knows that somewhere else, he never sends her away, and she helps him win his War, and the Machines and humans coexist until the end of that timeline. She knows that somewhere, her Bellamy is waiting on his bed with a chessboard, and somewhere else, he is waiting for her to come back from this trip.

But she knows that right now, this Bellamy is in love with her, and she is in love with him, and he’s going to press his mouth to her skin and she’s going to let him.

Eventually, a Machine named Dante will ask for something that she probably won’t want to give him. But she will, because Bellamy asked her to. She will—not because he ordered her to, but because she is a member of the Resistance, and this is what she wants. This is who she is.

But in the meantime, she will give her Bellamy new memories to hold onto, and she hopes that each time she kisses his younger skin, the feel of it travels through the years and he hears her.

_I’ll be back, I’ll be back, I’ll be back._


End file.
